“Yes.”
Pete got up and hobbled around the front of the car holding his knee. The remaining headlight still shone bravely into the snow. “She better be crippled or blind, that’s all I can say,” he told Henry. “If she’s not, I’m gonna kick her ass all the way back to Gosselin’s.” Henry began to laugh again. It was the mental picture of Pete hopping… then kicking. Like some fucked-up Rockette. “Peter, don’t you really hurt her!” he shouted, suspecting any severity he might have managed was negated by the fact that he was speaking between gusts of maniacal laughter.
“I won’t unless she puts some sass on me,” Pete said. The words, carried back to Henry on the wind, had an offended-old-lady quality to them that made him laugh harder than ever. He scooted down his jeans and long underwear and stood there in his jockeys to see how badly the turnsignal stalk had wounded him.
It was a shallow gash about three inches long on the inside of his thigh. It had bled copiously-was still oozing-but Henry didn’t think it was deep.
“What in the hell did you think you were doing?” Pete scolded from the other side of the overturned Scout, whose wipers were still whick-thumping back and forth. And although Pete’s tirade was laced with profanity (much of it decidedly Beaverish), his friend still sounded to Henry like an offended old lady schoolteacher, and this got him laughing again as he hauled up his britches.
“Why you sittin out here in the middle of the motherfuckin road in the middle of a motherfuckin snowstorm? You drunk? High on drugs? What kind of dumb doodlyfuck are you? Hey, talk to me! You almost got me n my buddy killed, the least you can do is… oww, FUCK-ME-FREDDY!”
Henry came around the wreck just in time to see Pete fall over beside Ms Buddha. His leg must have locked up again. She never looked at him. The orange ribbons on her hat blew out behind her.
Her face was raised into the storm, wide eyes not blinking as the snowflakes whirled into them to melt on their warm living lenses, and Henry felt, in spite of everything, his professional curiosity aroused. Just what had they found here?
3
“Oww, fuck me sideways, shit-a-goddam, don’t that fuckin HURT!”
“Are you all right?” Henry asked, and that started him laughing again. What a foolish question.
“Do I sound all right, shrink-boy?” Pete asked waspishly, but when Henry bent toward him, he raised one hand and waved him away. “Nah, I got it, it’s lettin go, check Princess Dipshit. She just sits there.”
Henry dropped to his knees in front of the woman, wincing at the pain-his legs, yes, but his shoulder also hurt where he had banged it on the roof and his neck was stiffening rapidly-but still chuckling.
This was no dewy damsel in distress. She was forty at least, and heavyset. Although her parka was thick and she was wearing God knew how many layers beneath it, it swelled noticeably in front, indicating the sort of prodigious jugs for which breast-reduction surgery had been made. The hair whipping out from beneath and around the flaps of her cap was cut in no particular style. Like them, she was wearing jeans, but one of her thighs would have made two of Henry’s. The first word to occur to him was countrywoman-the kind of woman you saw hanging out her wash in the toy-littered yard beside her doublewide trailer while Garth or Shania blared from a radio stuck in an open window… or maybe buying a few groceries at Gosselin’s. The orange gear suggested that she might have been hunting, but if so, where was her rifle? Already covered in snow? Her wide eyes were dark blue and utterly blank. Henry looked for her tracks and saw none. The wind had erased them, no doubt, but it was still eerie; she might have dropped from the sky.
Henry pulled his glove off and snapped his fingers in front of those staring eyes. They blinked. It wasn’t much, but more than he had expected, given the fact that a multi-ton vehicle had just missed her by inches and never a twitch from her.
“Hey!” he shouted in her face. “Hey, come back! Come back!” He snapped his fingers again and could hardly feel them-when had it turned so cold? We’re in a goddam situation here, he thought.
The woman burped. The sound was startlingly loud even with the wind in the trees, and before it was snatched away by the moving air, he got a whiff of something both bitter and pungent it smelled like medicinal alcohol. The woman shifted and grimaced, then broke wind-a long, purring fart that sounded like ripping cloth. Maybe, Henry thought, it’s how the locals say hello. The idea got him laughing again.
“Holy shit,” Pete said, almost in his ear. “Sounds like she nipped out the seat of her pants with that one. What you been drinkin, lady, Prestone?” And then, to Henry: “She’s been drinkin somethin, by Christ, and if it ain’t antifreeze, I’m a monkey.”
Henry could smell it, too.
The woman’s eyes suddenly shifted, met Henry’s own. He was shocked by the pain he saw in them. “Where’s Rick?” she asked. “I have to find Rick-he’s the only one left.” She grimaced, and when her lips peeled back, Henry saw that half her teeth were gone. Those remaining looked like stakes in a dilapidated fence. She belched again, and the smell was strong enough to make his eyes water.
“Aw, holy Christ!” Pete nearly screamed. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. The only things he knew for sure were that the woman’s eyes had gone blank again and that they were in a goddam situation here. Had he been alone, he might have considered sitting down next to the woman and putting his arm around her-a much more interesting and unique answer to the final problem than the Hemingway Solution. But there was Pete to think about-Pete hadn’t even been through his first alcohol rehab yet, although that was undoubtedly in the cards.
And besides, he was curious.
4
Pete was sitting in the snow, working at his knee again with his hands, looking at Henry, waiting for him to do something, which was fair enough, since so often he had been the idea man of their quartet. They hadn’t had a leader, but Henry had been the closest thing to it. Even back in junior high school that had been true. The woman, meanwhile, was looking at no one, just staring off into the snow again.
Settle, Henry thought. Just take a deep breath and settle.
He took the breath, held it, and let it out. Better. A little better. All right, what was up with this lady? Never mind where she’d come from, what she was doing here, or why she smelled like diluted antifreeze when she burped. What was up with her right now?
Shock, obviously. Shock so deep it was like a form of catatonia-witness how she had not so much as stirred when the Scout went skidding by her at shaving distance. And yet she hadn’t retreated so far inside that only a hypo of something excitable could reach her; she had responded to the snap of his fingers, and she had spoken. Had inquired about someone named Rick.
“Henry-”
“Quiet a minute.”
He took off his gloves again, held his hands in front of her face, and clapped them smartly. He thought the sound very small compared to the steady whoosh of the wind in the trees, but she blinked again.
“On your feet!”
Henry took her gloved hands and was encouraged when they closed reflexively around his. He leaned forward, getting into her face, smelling that ethery odor. No one who smelled like that could be very well.
“On your feet, get up! With me! On three! One, two, three!”
He stood, holding her hands. She rose, her knees popping, and burped again. She broke wind again as well. Her hat went askew, dipping over one eye. When she made no move to straighten it, Henry said. “Fix her hat.”
“Hub?” Pete had also gotten up, although he didn’t look very steady.
“I don’t want to let go of her. Fix her hat, get it out of her eye.”
Gingerly, Pete reached out and straightened her hat. The woman bent slightly, grimaced, farted.
“Thank you very much,” Pete said sourly. “You’ve been a wonderful audience, good night.”
Henry could feel her sagging and tightened his grip.
“Walk!” he shouted, getting into her face again. “Walk with me!
On three! One, two, three!”
He began walking backwards, toward the front of the Scout. She was looking at him now and he held her gaze. Without glancing at Pete-he didn’t want to risk losing her-he said, “Take my belt. Lead me.”
“Where?”
“Around the other side of the Scout.”